Stock monitor same product diff sizes?

[Riplees]

STOCK MONITORING - I need to add my products with size options. eg. Trousers: choose size: SMALL, MEDIUM etc. But how do i set up my catalog to enable me to stock monitor the sizes as they are bought? Do i use components or attributes or ?

[Jan]

You need to create a hidden product for each of your phyiscal products and switch stock monitoring on. Then create components, attributes and choices for the product on the web site, then open the component details up and select the permutations tab and create a permutation for each physical product and link the permutation to the hidden product. Then when an order arrives it will reduce the stock for the hidden product.

Regards,

[Riplees]

Thanks Jan, i'll give it a go. Are there any graphics/illustrations to show the process? I could do with seeing a pic of at least the layout tree as i see when i open actinic.
Regards
anita

[Jan]

If you look in the standard Actinic help and search for permutations you should find a section called "Permutations -worked example". It doesn't actually link to a product but you can see from the example where the drop down is on the permutations tab that allows you to do this.

Regards,

[Riplees]

Thank you, thank you. i think i finally sorted the stock thing! One last question. The hidden products have stock monitoring enabled. Should the master product (the visible one) have stock monitoring disabled? i hope answer is yes, then i understand!

[Jan]

:-)

The answer is yes, stock monitoring should be disabled for the main product.

Regards,

[Tony Appleton]

Glad to see this question - I have the same need! Using this method however, if stock drops to zero for say size 1, yet 2 & 3 are still in stock will this allow purchase of sizes 2 & 3 and block purchase of 1?

At what point in the transaction is the customer informed out of stock?

[Jan]

My understanding is that the stock levels are really only used to decide whether to display 'Out of stock' or 'Add to basket' next to the product, so I think that that transaction would go though.

Regards,

[Tony Appleton]

Thanks Jan - I'll give it a try and see!

[suncloth]

When you set up tracking stock in this way, if you have one size "in stock" and one "out of stock" the customer is not informed of the size that is out of stock until he/she attempts to add that item to the shopping cart. At that point the customer is told the size is not available. We modify the choices to indicate when a size is out of stock so the customer does not get frustrated. I am hoping Actinic will be modified in the future to indicate to the customer if a valid choice (or combination of choices) is not available on the product page when stock tracking is done this way or change the method of stock tracking for those of us who sell items with multiple attributes/choices.

[pinbrook]

I would like to see the ability to enter stock levels in the component box.

When you are selling items with many choices ie clothes with colurs and sizes, it is a real time guzzler having to set up the products twice.

Especially if you then want to put some items in more than one section, then you are talking about maintaining 3 items if you have a price change!!

[Tony Appleton]

Hmmm.... you have unfortunately confirmed my fears! I had hoped there was an easy solution to this that I had just not found yet!!

Seems like this is going to be v time consuming and prone to human error